Never Leave the Playground
by Yellowtail555
Summary: Rose and Louis never knew what it was. They liked arguing with each other and knew each other better than anyone else and it was more than friendship. But.. love? Perhaps. Cousincest


_The actual story is 2,535 words and written for Lady's The Pairing One Hour/Hardest Challenge for the Medium 2 hour option. That's 2,500 words in two hours. My pairing was Louis/Rose with the prompts: Lifted, Long Roads, "Why are you always following me?", and garden. I only had to use two but I think I used all four (although, the third one was changed a bit). I hope you enjoy and R&R. That's the longest story I've ever written (by a lot) and I'm half proud of it, half not. Oh well..._

Rose swore it started when they were five years old and playing on a playground that was only a few blocks away from her house. Louis argued that he'd liked her since they were three and splashing each other in the waves by Shell Cottage. They always seemed to be arguing, but that didn't make their relationship any less significant. Louis had always liked arguing with someone who was intelligent enough to keep up with the conversation and whose main point wasn't that they were going to tell Mum and Rose was the only person his age who met both requirements. Rose liked it because she loved the thrill of the words flying back and forth.

They both lost matches, it seemed. Louis finally agreed that the _thing_ they had started, like Rose had said, when they were five but that he'd liked her since he was three. She kissed his cheek and said that hardly counted. He was probably still in love with his Mum when he was that age. (He blushed but didn't deny it).

It worked, though. They were in the same year at Hogwarts and yeah, she was a Gryffindor and he was a Ravenclaw but her best friend was a Ravenclaw so no one complained when she sat between the two of them at the Ravenclaw table during breakfast. And practically his whole family was in Gryffindor so everyone just looked away when he joined them for dinner.

People said they were like siblings to each other. Both of his sisters were so much older than him that Victorie was already at the Ministry when he started Hogwarts and Dom was in her last year and seventh years didn't talk to first years, even if they were siblings and in the same House. Rose and Hugo didn't get along… at all, so it seemed only natural that they'd find siblings in each other. People said that your House was your family at Hogwarts but that wasn't true.

-:-

They were constantly hurrying to and from each other's houses and their third year was over, finally, and this would work. Louis nearly forgot her birthday, he said, but where everyone else gave her books (because she was so like her Mum, apparently) or a game of exploding snap or wizard chess (because she was so much like her Dad, according to them), Louis took her to the park and bought her an ice cream from the vendor and gave her a book on mechanics and hugged her and told her that when they got older he would buy the playground for her.

Their parents smiled but they both knew that their parents wished they would act their age and stop hoping for things like five year olds. Hermione, Ron, Bill, and Fleur had no idea they when Louis said that and Rose hugged him 'thank you' the two of them were one hundred percent serious. They both fully expected him to do just that.

Rose knew that they weren't just friends, for all of her cousins were her friends and none of them understood her like that and knew that she didn't want to be her parents but wanted to be a wizarding mechanic and have a place to be hers that would remind her of her childhood and of Louis.

They were nearly fourteen and they weren't sure what they had.

-:-

Every relationship has it's good patches and it's bad ones and they skipped along them both so quickly (like a skipping rock bouncing over the waves, Rose would remark cheerfully, as they sat on the old beach chairs that sagged a bit too low and threw pebbles into the watery depths) that looking back they couldn't tell them apart.

But this was a good patch, Rose swore, as they sat on the same playground that they'd bonded at all those years ago (ten years) when they were five. The playground was so popular when they were little, little boys chasing each other around and girls swinging on the monkey bars. But now, they were the only ones; Rose hanging upside down from the bars, her hair and shirt flying up (but neither of them particularly cared) and Louis sitting on the end of the slide, wondering how Rose could keep up such a convincing argument from upside down. They were arguing about the names in their family and about how they were the only ones that weren't named after someone. Everyone knew that the Potters were named after war heroes, and so was Fred; and Molly was named after their grandmother, Lucy was named after Aunt Audrey's sister, Roxanne M. was the girl who eventually got Aunt Angelina and Uncle George together again and so their energetic cousin was named after her, Hugo was Aunt Hermione's childhood friend, Vic was named after their victory goddamn it and Dominique was named after Aunt Fleur's mum.

But Rose was just Rose and Louis's name was just that: Louis. But together, they could be Louis and Rose and that was perfect. Rose corrected him, as she was bound to do.

"Rose and Louis." And the names fit together so well and sounded so _right_ that Louis barely noticed that she had come down from her spot and kissed him.

They were fifteen and their family couldn't know that they were secretly _Rose and Louis _instead of just Louis and Rose- two friends.

-:-

They were at Vic and Teddy's house and they were sixteen and nowadays there seemed to be more ups than downs. Teddy was correcting papers and Vic was at work so they were alone in the garden and really, that was how they wanted it but telling their parents they were at Teddy and Vic's house was better than telling them they were off to that old playground again.

Rose was sitting on the bench in their garden which was just far enough away from the house that if Teddy looked out his study window, he'd only see some thick plants and maybe some flashes of movement. Louis was pacing and secretly thinking about how much he loved her hair. It wasn't as bright as, say, Lucy's or Molly's or, really, any of the family members with red hair but more of a nice auburn and he'd always thought of it as a compromise.

Rose was talking about how some day she'd want a big wedding but she didn't want it to be all traditional like Dom's threatened to be and he'd joked about how it had to be big with the size of her family but inside he reminded himself that she had a boyfriend- which seemed like a forbidden word between the two of them. She'd assured him that she didn't like Lorcan like she liked him but that he was just a cover and yet Louis couldn't help himself from worrying.

"Ms. Rose Scamander?" he asked, sarcastically.

"Mrs," she corrected him absentmindedly and then looked up and realized what he'd said. "No! Louis! No, I was just saying that in that context it would be a- oh, Merlin, no!"

He knew that Rose lied, he'd seen her lying to her parents so many times that it rather scared him, but he'd always thought she'd never lie to him. Maybe he was just hoping but it was a very foolish hope and he saw that now.

"I broke up with Lorcan, anyway."

He looks at her and she pushes herself up from the bench and throws her arms around him. "And when were you going to tell me this."

"When I finished with my fantasy for a wedding," He lifted her up, marital style, and she laughed, wrapping her arms around his neck and whispered, her breath tickling his ear, "well, I never told you who the groom would be." She kissed him and he nearly dropped her.

"I'd like that, too."

They were sixteen and they were going to sort out these feelings, one way or another.

-:-

"Lucy! Why are you following me?" Rose grabbed the shoulders of her little cousin, who was staring up at her.

"You're going to meet Louis on the old playground." Lucy grabbed her cousin's hand and dragged Rose along the overgrown trail to the playground in the dead of night.

"How do you know?"

Lucy gave her a look and Rose just followed. Louis turned around to see them, scared. "Rose! Mum nearly found me when I apparated. I need to get back." And with that, he left.

Rose watched him go, the words she'd been planning to say still on her tongue. Lucy glanced up at her. "I won't tell." And then she disappeared back to the house.

Rose sat down on the seesaw, and rested her elbows on the handgrips, and finally cried. Louis ddin't have time for her anymore and Lucy knew, she knew she shouldn't have agreed to let the fifteen year old sleep over but she said that her mum and dad were fighting and Molly had moved out already. There were so many downs and they seemed to be arguing less, but there was an uncomfortable silence and she didn't know how to break it. They seemed to spend more time watching movies at his place so the characters could break the quiet.

They were seventeen and Rose knew what she thought of Louis but she didn't know if she'd ever be able to tell him.

-:-

He came to meet her at the playground because he had moved out and he didn't know if he could take all this change without her by his side. And she was there, as he knew she would be, but she wasn't alone. She was kissing Lorcan again and he just turned and walked out. How should he have expected Rose to still want him when they had barely talked for the past year. And it wasn't like they had ever talked about love or whatever was going on between them.

He hadn't seen the playground for at least six months and one of the slides was cracked and the monkey bars were all rusted and the paint on the climbing structure had started peeling in big strips. Everything that remained of their childhood as best friends seemed to be gone but then Rose pulled away from Lorcan and ran after him.

"Wait! Louis! LOUIS!" he ignored her, preparing to apparate back to his flat when she grabbed his hand and pulled him towards her new house, only a few minutes away. "We need to talk."

"No, we don't. You've said enough just by kissing him."

"You haven't talked to me for a year, what was I supposed to expect?"

"So now this is my fault?"

"Can I say what I was going to tell you when Lucy brought me and you had to go?"

"Feel free. I'm leaving."

"I love you."

He turned.

"We'd never had a name for what we had but there it is. That's what I feel at least."

They were eighteen and they were in love- for that's what it had to be.

-:-

"It's our life. They have to accept it."

"They might not. Your dad… and Hugo… and my mum, oh and my sisters…"

"Lucy'll accept it and everyone else will want what's best for us, you know that. They'll be okay with it if we just give them time, I swear they will. Please, Louis. I need their approval."

"What if you don't get it."

"Don't… just don't."

It wasn't the only argument Rose had ever won but it was probably the most significant. It was the reason they were in front of the whole family with Lucy silently cheering them on with smiles.

So they stood there and told their parents and aunts and uncles and cousins and siblings (for they'd gathered them all there, even though they had to grab Dom in from the United States and Audrey and Percy had been on a second honeymoon since Lucy was officially of age) that they'd loved each other since they were eighteen (Louis had argued it was technically since they were five but Rose thought that sounded scarier for their family, and besides, they didn't have a name for it until two years ago).

Lucy had instantly given her approval, as had Al and Molly. Fred, Roxanne, James, and Aunt Audrey only needed a bit longer. Uncle George, Aunt Angelina, and Uncle Harry had also agreed, but it took Hugo, Vic, Dom, Rose's Mum, Louis's Dad, and Aunt Ginny nearly an hour to say yes. Ron and Fleur finally got talked into it and Louis lifted Rose up and twirled her around.

They were twenty and they were going to get married. No one cared that they were cousins because it just worked (or so they told themselves)

-:-

Louis had promised Rose- all those years ago on her fourteenth birthday- that one day he would buy her the playground and he'd nearly forgotten that promise. But they'd moved into her flat which was only a few houses down from the park and they were both working and they had money from the sale of his house and they were at the park when Rose said something surprising.

"I always thought of this park as our relationship. It was great when we were little and deteriorated a bit as we grew up and then that year we weren't talking, it really fell apart and… during the two years we were dating before we got married, I would come over here and cut the grass or whatever to try to fix it up. And that's why I was so sure it would work when we told our parents. Because the proof was right here." She gestured around her.

And Louis remembered. "I told you a long time ago that one day I would buy this playground for you and now I will."

She shook her head. "You don't have to."

"I do."

And she stayed quiet even though what she half wanted to argue because it was natural but more than that, she did want it.

"But it won't be ours. We'll just fix it up and it'll be a great place for children again. Maybe one day our children."

They were twenty two and they felt that fixing up this park would insure a long romance.

-:-

It had been a long road, Rose couldn't deny it even though Louis had said it and what they liked best was arguing with each other, a twisty one too. Rather more like a rollercoaster with all the bumps and turns and that year when they went upside down. Now, however, it was more of a slightly rocky drive. And who'd have thought that at twenty five they'd be married (Rose had done some legal thing where she changed her last name and no one even asked twice) and live only a few houses down from the playground. It had been rough, yes. But no love was ever easy.

They still couldn't agree on when it started but it ended here and that's all that had ever really mattered.


End file.
